Seared Scallops

I finally ventured out to a fresh seafood market around North Hollywood today.  I originally was on the hunt for a nice piece of swordfish to make a grilled swordfish steak for dinner this week, but once I got there I found the bay scallops were on a good sale at the market, so my plans were quickly changed.  I got home and quickly took to the interwebs to find a great new recipe to try out.  I found one that caught my eye for it's simplicity and rave reviews.  Simple seared scallops with a orange and jalapeno dressing.  Now, if you know me when, you'll know I can't eat spicy food at all.  The nice thing about this recipe is that it only uses the green of the jalapeno, no seeds or interior flesh.  This leaves the sauce having a very mild kick to it.  Tasty!

Orange-Jalapeno Dressing
-Small jalapeno
-Sweet orange
-1/4 cup seasoned rice vinegar
-1 tbsp olive oil

The first part of the recipe was probably the more crucial..... the cutting of the pepper.  Gotta make sure to not leave any of the white interior flesh or any of the seeds behind... thats what the heat is.  It was really simple to do. Made about 6 slices int the pepper to get all the green parts, and the sliced and diced it until all that remained was tiny little pepper cubes.  In a bowl I mixed in the diced pepper with the seasoned rice vinegar.  Next up, cutting the orange.  The recipe called for only the interior part of the fruit, cut into sections.  I started by skinning the orange down to the flesh of the orange taking off all the white of the fruit.  Next, using the the knife slitted the orange sections in between the tough parts of the fruit.  Helpful hint: do this over the bowl your using to capture all the juices the leak out of the orange.  Once I de-sectioned the orange, I gave it a good squeeze to get all the juice I could out of it.  The citrus of the orange I guess helps offset the heat from the pepper and combined with the vinegar leaves a really nice dressing.  Added in the olive oil to beef up the consistency of the sauce, and viola...finished.

I've already gone over how I like to sear my scallops, as demonstrated when I made the creole chicken. If you haven't already checked it out, you can do it now.... well in a minute or so once you finish with this recipe.

Rice
-1/2 cup white rice
-Chicken stock

In case you've never made rice before.... I'll throw down a pretty solid recipe for some tasty rice.  I mix in equal parts water and rice into a sauce pan.  Crank up the heat until it's boiling and once boiling, mix in a packet of chicken stock, stir it around until fully disolved and then remove from heat.  Keeping the rice covered, it will continue to cook until the water is all evaporated.  The rice will be nice and fluffy and ready to go.  Note, you should probably not always follow the whole equal parts rule, it'll probably depend on the brand of rice you buy, just fyi.


I wasn't too sure how to plate this meal.... I was tempted to keep the rice separate, but finally decided on bed of rice, smothered in the dressing, then layer the scallops on top and then another layer of the dressing.  Turned out to look pretty good in my opinion.

The meal itself was really tasty. Not crazy spicy despite the jalapeno.  There was a good bite to it, but no lingering heat.  Loved it.  Probably not enough for a full meal though.  I think when I make this again, I'll likely buy smaller sized scallops, cut the portion size down and serve it as an appetizer to a real meal haha.  Still, looks and tastes good.  Definitely a keeper.